A half-baked and sometimes-disturbing tale.
Meyers (Another’s Fool, 2017, etc.) offers a Western about a 12-year-old who assists his uncles in the capture of an infamous thief.
In 1922, young Bing is the nephew of a sheriff and his deputy in Wilbarger County, Texas. As such, he doesn’t spend his days in school. Instead, his Uncle Jim and Uncle Rube let him tag along on important missions, including collecting prisoners off the local train and locking them up in town. One day, Frank Holloway—the notorious “Oklahoma Yeggman” (the latter term a slang word for “safe-cracker”)—comes to town in chains. He was recently caught for pickpocketing in Chicago, and many people consider him to be a shadow of his former glory. But Uncle Jim believes that the yeggman is as mischievous as ever, and he encourages Bing to treat him as a highly skilled criminal. After Holloway pleads not guilty and gets released until his next court hearing, he ends up robbing the local bank, and Bing joins Jim and Rube as they try to beat him to the Mexican border. The yeggman’s crimes bring to mind those in The Apple Dumpling Gang (1975) and The Sting (1973). As Bing tracks the convict, he observes how the Wild West is disappearing, only to make way for new crimes and punishments. In this way, Meyers effectively shows how the era of the Old West met the Victorian Age. In general, however, the book would have been clearer if it had simply used more pronouns; the author’s style of dialogue often lacks them, resulting in half-formed thoughts and cryptic details: “Going home tomorrow. Won’t stay here, you can bet on that!” Also, the book repeatedly and uncomfortably suggests that older adults find the 12-year-old protagonist to be sexually attractive. For instance, one of Uncle Jim’s friends looks at Bing and comments, “How lips—so ruby red!—impress one as wishing to be pressed with one’s own.”
A half-baked and sometimes-disturbing tale.Pub Date: June 25, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-63263-870-0
Page Count: 158
Publisher: Booklocker.com
Review Posted Online: Aug. 22, 2018
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Briskly written soap with down-to-earth types, mostly without the lachrymose contrivances of Hannah’s previous titles...
Sisters in and out of love.
Meghann Dontess is a high-powered matrimonial lawyer in Seattle who prefers sex with strangers to emotional intimacy: a strategy bound to backfire sooner or later, warns her tough-talking shrink. It’s advice Meghann decides to ignore, along with the memories of her difficult childhood, neglectful mother, and younger sister. Though she managed to reunite Claire with Sam Cavenaugh (her father but not Meghann’s) when her mother abandoned both girls long ago, Meghann still feels guilty that her sister’s life doesn’t measure up, at least on her terms. Never married, Claire ekes out a living running a country campground with her dad and is raising her six-year-old daughter on her own. When she falls in love for the first time with an up-and-coming country musician, Meghann is appalled: Bobby Austin is a three-time loser at marriage—how on earth can Claire be so blind? Bobby’s blunt explanation doesn’t exactly satisfy the concerned big sister, who busies herself planning Claire’s dream wedding anyway. And, to relieve the stress, she beds various guys she picks up in bars, including Dr. Joe Wyatt, a neurosurgeon turned homeless drifter after the demise of his beloved wife Diane (whom he euthanized). When Claire’s awful headache turns out to be a kind of brain tumor known among neurologists as a “terminator,” Joe rallies. Turns out that Claire had befriended his wife on her deathbed, and now in turn he must try to save her. Is it too late? Will Meghann find true love at last?
Briskly written soap with down-to-earth types, mostly without the lachrymose contrivances of Hannah’s previous titles (Distant Shores, 2002, etc.). Kudos for skipping the snifflefest this time around.Pub Date: May 1, 2003
ISBN: 0-345-45073-6
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2003
Coelho's placebo has racked up impressive sales in Brazil and Europe. Americans should flock to it like gulls.
Coelho is a Brazilian writer with four books to his credit. Following Diary of a Magus (1992—not reviewed) came this book, published in Brazil in 1988: it's an interdenominational, transcendental, inspirational fable—in other words, a bag of wind.
The story is about a youth empowered to follow his dream. Santiago is an Andalusian shepherd boy who learns through a dream of a treasure in the Egyptian pyramids. An old man, the king of Salem, the first of various spiritual guides, tells the boy that he has discovered his destiny: "to realize one's destiny is a person's only real obligation." So Santiago sells his sheep, sails to Tangier, is tricked out of his money, regains it through hard work, crosses the desert with a caravan, stops at an oasis long enough to fall in love, escapes from warring tribesmen by performing a miracle, reaches the pyramids, and eventually gets both the gold and the girl. Along the way he meets an Englishman who describes the Soul of the World; the desert woman Fatima, who teaches him the Language of the World; and an alchemist who says, "Listen to your heart" A message clings like ivy to every encounter; everyone, but everyone, has to put in their two cents' worth, from the crystal merchant to the camel driver ("concentrate always on the present, you'll be a happy man"). The absence of characterization and overall blandness suggest authorship by a committee of self-improvement pundits—a far cry from Saint- Exupery's The Little Prince: that flagship of the genre was a genuine charmer because it clearly derived from a quirky, individual sensibility.
Coelho's placebo has racked up impressive sales in Brazil and Europe. Americans should flock to it like gulls.Pub Date: July 1, 1993
ISBN: 0-06-250217-4
Page Count: 192
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1993
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
BOOK TO SCREEN
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